Read Cemetery World for Free Online

here for treasure. They were here for data, to observe.”
    “For data, sure,” she said, “but what about the observer? He would have been a professional, wouldn’t he? A historian, perhaps far more than a historian. He would have recognized the cultural value of certain artifacts—the ceremonial hand axe of a prehistoric tribe, a Grecian urn, Egyptian jewelry …”
    I crammed the letter into my jacket pocket, jumped out of the car. “We can talk about this later,” I said. “Right now I have to turn Elmer loose so we can start setting up the Bronco.”
    “Am I going with you?”
    “We’ll see,” I said.
    How the hell, I wondered, could I keep her from going?
    She had Thorney’s blessing; she maybe did have something about the Anachronians, perhaps even about a treasure. And I couldn’t leave her here, flat broke—for if she wasn’t quite broke yet, she would be if she stayed on at the inn and there was no place else for her to stay. God knows, I didn’t want her. She would be a nuisance. I was not on a treasure hunt. I had come to Earth to put together a composition. I hoped to capture some of the feel of Earth—Earth minus Cemetery. I couldn’t go off chasing treasure or Anachronians. All that I’d ever told Thorney was that I’d keep my eyes open for clues and that didn’t mean going out to hunt for them.
    I headed for the open door of the shed, with Cynthia trailing at my heels. Inside the shed was dark and I paused for a moment to let my eyes become accustomed to the darkness. Something moved and I made out three men—three workmen from the looks of them.
    “I have some boxes here,” I said. There were a lot of boxes, the piled cargo off the funeral ship.
    “Right over there, Mr. Carson,” said one of them. He gestured to one side and I saw them—the big crate enclosing Elmer and the four crates in which we had boxed the Bronco.
    “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate your keeping them separate from the rest. I’d asked the captain, but …”
    “There’s just one little matter,” said the man. “Handling and storage.”
    “I don’t get it. Handling and storage?”
    “Sure, the charges. My men don’t work for free.”
    “You’re the foreman here?”
    “Yeah. Reilly is the name.”
    “How much is this storage?”
    Reilly reached into his back pocket and hauled forth a paper. He studied it fixedly, as if making sure he had the figures right.
    “Well,” he said, “it runs to four hundred and twenty-seven credits, but let us say four hundred.”
    “You must be wrong,” I told him, trying to keep my temper. “All you did was unship the crates and haul them in here and, as for storage, they’ve been here only an hour or so.”
    Reilly shook his head, sadly. “I can’t help that. Them’s the charges. You either pay them or we hold the cargo. Them’s the rules.”
    The other two men had moved up silently, one to either side of him.
    “It’s all ridiculous,” I protested. “This must be a joke.”
    “Mister,” said the foreman, “it isn’t any joke.”
    I didn’t have four hundred credits, and I wouldn’t have paid it if I had, but neither was I going to tackle the foreman and the husky stevedores standing with him.
    “I’ll look into this,” I said, trying to save face, having no idea what I could do next. They had me cold, I knew. Although it wasn’t them; it was Maxwell Peter Bell. He was the one who had me cold.
    “You do that, mister,” said Reilly. “You just go ahead and do it.”
    I could go storming back to Bell and that was exactly what he wanted. He expected that I would and it would be all right, of course, and all would be forgiven, if I accepted a Cemetery grant and did Cemetery work. But I wasn’t going to do that, either.
    Cynthia said, behind me, “Fletcher, they’re ganging up on us.”
    I turned my head and there were more men, coming in the door. “Not ganging up on you,” said Reilly. “Just making sure that you understand. There